Monday, February 9, 2015

There’s a new vendor at Haile’s Saturday Market— LEJ Pretzels—and maybe
it’s my Pennsylvania heritage (80% of America’s pretzels are made in
PA) that made me try their product.

I like a good soft pretzel and I don’t care whether it’s claimed to be
Bavarian-style or not. The last soft pretzel was an act bordering on
being a pretzel-sin. I was in Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station and I
purchased a pretzel from a franchise vendor. Like other franchise
products it was enough to satisfy my hunger after an overnight train
ride but its flavor was mostly derived from the yellow (not dark)
mustard dispensed from small single serve packets. Dry and bland best
describe the pretzel.

I took one of LEJ’s full-sized “Bavarian-Style Pretzels with me when I
left the Market, eschewing on-the-spot consumption using their squeeze
bottle of commercial yellow mustard. To their credit, the people of LEJ
happily directed customers toward Nana Pat’s mustard; a few spaces
further south. Because Nana Pat is a “cottage food operation” her
mustard cannot be offered by LEJ, yet. It was the presence of some Fat
Tire in my refrigerator at home that clinched my decision to try a
pretzel.

When I got home I put the pretzel in its brown paper bag in the oven,
turned it to warm and began making a salad using some of the greens I’d
gotten. By the time the oven pre-heated to 170 my salad was ready and
the pretzel was at a proper overeating temperature. I added some of
Nana Pat’s Fat Tire mustard and ate. One of the problems with most
commercial, mall pretzels is that they are pale imitations lacking in
flavor. One of the strengths of LEJ’s pretzel is its abundance of the
right flavors which are derived from two sources; the basic dough that
is neither too sweet nor too salty and the properly darkened “skin. “
Without the skin, a result of the Maillard reaction which turns sugars
into much deeper, more complex flavors, a pretzel is little more than a
piece of dough. These pretzels make the grade with the addition of
mustard enhancing the flavor rather than being it.